5 November 08
Senator Barak Husain Obama’s victory in the US presidential elections holds hope, and a lesson, for an India still coming to grips with its own mufti cultural, multi ethnic, mufti linguistic and multi religious identity.
The US, like India, is a majority of minorities. The supremacy of an elite upper caste – racial or religious – cannot last forever. As Obama said, it is not America’s wealth, now discredited, or its military night, defeated in Vietnam, for instance, that make it great, but the commitment of it many peoples to commit themselves to the ideals of the founding fathers for a land of hope, equality, liberty, democracy and opportunity.
Mahatma Phule, Jawaharlal Nehru and Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi too had dreamt of this for an India where the governments would be of the people, by the people, for the people -- from Dalits including Dalit Christians, Tribals, landless farmers all the way to the megapolises of New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Calcutta and Hyderabad.
There are lessons both for the BJP and the Congress and for other political parties that they need to build grand coalitions of all people, instead of appeasing majority communities, or upper middle class elite, or religious fundamentalists.
We congratulate US President elect Obama and hope that in his tenure relations between India and the US will improve, that global pace will prevail, that global warming will be fought, that race relations will improve in US, and freedom of faith will strengthen in India, and that all minorities everywhere will come into their own in the promise of God.
John Dayal
Secretary General, All India Christian Council
Member, National Integration Council
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